I pretty much AM that user. ;-)
Thought I'd check in from the USA with some real-world comments on the "Android experience". I pretty much AM the user you're attempting to quantify. I earn low 5-figures a year, live WAY out in the boonies (we don't even get cable TV let alone 3G), am too broke to be able to afford ANY contract phone (let alone an i-anything), but I'm also sufficiently geeky that I don't mind mucking about with stuff to see if it will work. I work a day job with a very nice desktop (it better be, I built it myself) and have an even nicer desktop at home (ditto) that I use for pretty much everything - it's a DAW, a wireless hub and a home theater system out here where we don't get cable and have to stream everything. I also own a very cheap, very slow, 3G-less, Google Play-Store-less, rooted Android 4.0 tablet from Shenzen that I use as a mobile workstation of sorts, and I just finally broke down and bought my first Android smartphone: Android 2.3, no contract/pay as you go, runs on the towers of the ONLY provider that covers this area (sort of) but saves me $200 a month. It's not rooted yet, I'd love to have Android 4.0 at least but I'm trying to work my nerve up since by MY standards I did pay quite a lot for it at US $200.
It is true. I DEFINITELY do not shop with it. The first thing you learn about Android when you start using it is how insecure it is (e.g. the Eurograbber thing just last week). There is NO WAY that my personal financial information is getting anywhere NEAR my Android-anything. I do the majority of my shopping online, but it's from desktop boxes at work and home, NOT from my cell. Even then, I have a prepaid credit card I use most places so if my data gets stolen I'm only out maybe $50, they're not going to get my whole bank account.
Browsers: I use Opera Mini only on both my tablet and my smartphone. If I do use the browser it's to surf the one forum I regularly frequent.
Apps: As others have pointed out, I use apps to get my data more than I do the browser. I have the obligatory FB, 2 very nice news aggregator apps (1 for US, 1 for UK), a couple of soccer news apps, TweetDeck, the 2 main e-readers, and a few music-performance related apps (tuner, metronome, recorder), some utilities (AV, data manager, etc.), Dragon Remote Mic which I use all the time at work, and that's about it. Remember that low-end Android devices are *severely* limited by the amount of onboard memory. I have to be *really* careful how many apps I install, and I have to go thru them all about once a week and empty caches, delete data, etc. If an app can't be set up to run off the SD card, it's useless to me. A surprising number of apps still don't do this. So that's lesson one for Android developers - MAKE IT RUN OFF THE FSCKING SD CARD.
The Play Store. It's a draaaaaaaaaag. So much scamware, bloatware and crapware you can't FIND anything. And when you do, you really have to read the fine print. Perfect example: I got ALL excited to find what looked like a pretty reasonable DAW/Garageband clone for Android.... which I *would* in fact pay good money to run on my tablet... only to find that the TOS states the developer OWNS the copyright to EVERYTHING you create on it. Gee, let's think about that deal for 3 ms: I pay you for it AND you get all my copyrights? How 'bout "NO." We still need a good Garageband, and I still would pay for it. The only other app I paid for is a music notation program which actually does work, at least to do what I personally need it to do. I would pay even more for apps that are related to my profession, but my profession is one of the ones that is notoriously lagging behind on going mobile, and there's nothing out there to buy. (I'm half toying w/ learning how to program so I can develop my own, since NOBODY else is doing it.)
Lastly: we don't stream b/c we are data-capped, and in fact on my provider, streaming is a TOS violation: they will brick your phone and lose your phone number. We don't have the option on this provider (yet) to buy more data when we've used up the 2 gig/mo. Even FB can be a bit of a data hog by these standards. Therefore I have to manage data very carefully too. Yet another reason not to do any shopping on the little fscker, and it's just as well that none of the nav apps work at all out here where I live (Google Maps can't find my house and thinks my best friend 1/2 hour away lives 500 *miles* away).
But ya know, as long as I can get the Arsenal scores on the fly and use it as an e-reader in the checkout line at Wally World, it's all good... :-P It's not, really, but given the lack of 3G, I'm not sure an iPhone or iPad would perform any better out here, to be honest.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
